The University announced on March 27 that the dean of admissions at Wellesley College, Janet Lavin Rapelye, will replace Fred Hargadon as Princeton admission dean.
Rapelye — who has headed admissions at the all-women's school near Boston for 12 years after admission work at Bowdoin, Williams and Stanford — is the first female admission dean at Princeton. She assumed her new post on July 1 after Hargadon retired a 35-year-old career in admissions, including the last 15 at Princeton.
"I'm actually the first admission dean who is a woman since 1746," Rapelye said in an interview shortly after the appointment was announced. "And it just does not seem to be too soon right now."
Princeton this year received 15,725 applications for admission and offered spots to 1,570 students, a decrease from a 10.8 percent acceptance rate last year to 9.9 this year, according to Hargadon.
The appointment comes at a climactic point in college admissions. The Supreme Court will decide this year if race can be considered as a factor in admissions, and the SATs, athletic recruitment and early and alumni admission programs are topics of fierce national debate.
At Princeton, the administration is planning to increase the number of undergraduates by 500 starting in 2006 and attract more students interested in the performing arts.
Wellesley, a small college in New England, attracts about 3,500 students yearly in its applicant pool, compared to the more than 14,000 students who apply to Princeton. Rapelye said whether looking at a male or female applicant, "we're all looking for intellectual curiosity and academic excellence. This is where admissions, I think, sometimes becomes more art than science."
Plans
The new admission dean stressed her range of experience and said she wanted to hold back making decisions until learning more about Princeton admissions. But four significant programs were evident in her comments during the inteview.
First, she emphasized her interest in recruiting students in the performing and dramatic arts, a move President Tilghman and Hargadon have previously suggested the university would pursue.
Second, she said she thought Wellesley's way of selecting students for admission — through a committee vote of faculty, administrators, students and admission counselors — was valuable and would consider bringing aspects of it to Princeton. Currently, the Princeton admission dean makes all final decisions.
Third, she said the admission office could convey information about the intellectual climate at Princeton through new ways in publications and on the website.
Fourth, she said "there will be no formulas or quotas" in admissions. "We will work individually. Every student will get some kind of an individual read and processing."
Key issues
Rapelye said she "absolutely" supports an admission office's ability to use race as a factor in admissions. Forty percent of Wellesley is minority, compared to Princeton's 27 percent. She said that while she would not set a quota for how many minority students Princeton should admit, she thought it is a goal for an admission office to increase campus diversity.
If the Supreme Court decides race cannot be considered in admissions, she said Princeton would comply with the law and that the office would find other methods to broaden the pool.
On the whole, she said, she thought there was currently the right balance of alumni legacy and athletic recruiting in admissions.
"I don't think I would want to increase or decrease" the number of athletes before talking to coaches and assessing the situation, she said. "I think it's important for those who are sons and daughters of graduates to earn a spot," but she said she thought children of alumni should receive special attention, which may include admitting them at a higher rate.
Rapelye also said she supported keeping early admissions, saying there was no real difference between binding early decision and non-binding early action, and pledged to retain early decision for at least her first year.
"I think the question for us at selective schools is, 'Should there be any early program at all?'" she said. "I think it could be very good for students."
Rapelye said there was still time to consider how the changes to the SATs — including adding a writing section and modifying the math and verbal sections — would be used in admissions. She sits on the board of trustees of the College Board, which administers the SATs.
A search committee of six faculty, four administrators and three undergraduates was formed in November. Its chair, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, said the committee extended invitations to candidates throughout the country and received about 75 applications by January. Nine were selected for interviews, she said, and three were recommended by the committee to be interviewed by Tilghman, Provost Amy Gutmann and several trustees.
Malkiel said more than half of the nine were men but declined to describe the final three candidates. Rapelye said she found out Tilghman had selected her for recommendation to the board about two weeks before the announcement.
Hargadon announced his retirement last August amid news that several deputies had breached a Yale admission website. Hargadon took full blame, but Princeton said his retirement had already been planned.
Rapelye is a 1981 graduate of Williams, where she was on the ski team.
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